Skeleton found in basement during search for father missing since 1961

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LAKE GROVE, N.Y. — A New York man thinks he’s finally found his father, who vanished in 1961, and he hadn’t gone far — he was buried all these years in the family basement.

The couple’s children always wondered what happened to their father, and after years of asking questions, Michael Carroll began digging.Investigators on Thursday are working to determine if those skeletal remains indeed belonged to George Carroll, a Korean war veteran who moved to the Lake Grove home with his wife Dorothy Carroll in the 1950s. The couple had five children before Carroll mysteriously disappeared one day.

Michael Carroll, 57, the homeowner, was long haunted by his father’s fate, and after years of hunches and even consultations with genealogists and psychics, decided with his family to begin digging out the basement three years ago, but it took a while to find anything. Suffolk Police reported bones were found Wednesday, which was Halloween.

Police were called shortly after Michael Carroll’s sons unearthed the bones at the home near Olive Street and Magnolia Avenue. An anthropologist is now working to determine if the skeleton belongs to his father.

George Carroll disappeared the year his son Michael was born in 1961. His mother, Dorothy Carroll, died in 1998, her sons told WPIX.

The couple’s children always wondered what happened to their father, and after years of asking questions, Michael Carroll began digging.

“If it is him, all I can tell you is that it’s the happiest day of my life because I always thought he deserved better,” Michael Carroll said.